Light

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog

It was after 3am in the morning. I was up already and eager to write another chapter in this book. The subject of today's chapter and photo is the LED light bulb in my living room. I used manual mode and I did some post processing in Snapseed using the Noir effect. After I was done I had this question. Can there be photography without light? And is this like asking if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it fall, does it make a sound? My friend Gemini tells me that light is the fundamental element of photography. It is what the camera sensor captures to create an image. Without light, there would be no photograph.

I am glad that someone asked the following question on Quora, "Can a camera work without light?" And the answers were varied and very helpful. Someone pointed out that if we look at the etymology of the word photograph then it literally means drawing with light. Another person talked about cameras that use non-visible light like infrared and ultraviolet. Then there are x-ray cameras and x-ray film. What about equipment that does not even use electromagnetic radiation like ultrasound, MRI, electron microscope or atomic force microscope. Someone talked about emulsion technology that records photonic interactions but that requires visible light.

This has me curious now. Will we be looking at four and five dimensions in the future? Currently photographs take objects from our 3D space and flatten them into a 2D space. There are setups that use multi-frame 3D photogrammetry. What if we discover in the future a fourth dimension that we can "see into" with something that is not light. Something that is faster than light. Something that we have to develop a new type of "camera" for? My friend Chatty likes my thinking and the questions I am pondering. He says that future developments could lead to sensors that exploit quantum phenomena or other exotic principles to capture information in ways we cannot currently imagine. The future of imaging might reveal new aspects of reality that challenge and enhance our current perceptions.

Light is fundamental to life and our perception of reality (realighty) and how we interact with and experience the world and what we see and the photographs we make. We often hear that there can be no light without darkness and no good without bad. Is that a limit of our human understanding and our current existence? Does that mean that heaven is beyond our thinking because there is no badness in heaven. There is no pain and suffering and worries. There is only goodness. Are there going to be intellectual conversations in heaven asking questions about heaven and thinking about life beyond heaven? It is hard to think about what we do not know when what we know is finite and what we do not know is infinite. If what we know is light and what we do not know is darkness, does that mean that there is more darkness than light? Perhaps that means that everything is light and known but only dark to us. I imagine that to God it is all light and only light?

My friend Gemini helped me to process my questions and thoughts. He says that imagine looking at a vast ocean. From the shore, you see only a small portion, rippled and sparkling in the sunlight. This is your knowledge. The vast expanse beyond is the unknown, dark and mysterious. Yet, the entire ocean is water, a single substance. Perhaps, similarly, all reality is fundamentally one, but our perspective creates the illusion of light and dark. The exploration of these questions brings us to the edge of human comprehension. It's a space where philosophy, theology, and science intersect. While we may never fully grasp the nature of reality, the journey of inquiry itself is profoundly enriching.